Breathe
by RockinTheOC
Summary: The brevity of life brings new perspective to Seth. Future fic, one parter. Graphic imagery and mature theme about death.


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Rating: PG-13 for mature theme

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Note: well, this is a spur of the moment story that I thought about today. As some of you may know, I am in medical school (sort of, I'm in a combined program). I just thought about this while driving home from the hospital today, so I hope you enjoy…leave some reviews please.

Breathe

His eyelids were heavy. His head tilted to the side slightly, but he snapped back into a straight position. _Do not fall asleep, Seth. _Only a few more hours of this torture. It was ironic that medical students ran on less than 4-5 hours of sleep per night and yet they were expected to be alert and quick on their toes. He looked at the chart in front of him, slowly thumbing through pages and pages of codes and words he could not decipher, much less understand. 

It was funny, he thought rotating through the ICU unit would be more exciting, but at 7 AM in the morning, when the doctors had not shown up for rotations yet, it was completely silent save the occasional ringing of the phone or the beep of a ventilator. It may have been more exciting if he was involved in the process of the hospital, but here he was, just a scrub not allowed to touch or do anything. A year one medical student who had only one semester of training under his belt. He pretty much knew less than the average Joe about medicine at this point. But he was glad that he was getting the opportunity to spend time in the hospital and learn the ropes. 

It still surprised him, the decision to become a doctor. He was Seth Cohen, notorious for caring about himself most of the time. But when his grandfather passed away from a sudden heart attack a few years back, something had clicked in his brain. He had wanted so badly to be able to help others in the same situation his grandfather had been in, to warn them of the risks of high stress and hypertension. To help prevent them from leaving this earth early. It was idealistic, he was aware, but it was an honest, compassionate occupation. Seth was drawn to that. He had so many things just given to him as a child that it was time to give back to others. 

He looked over at his colleague, Aaron, one of his best friends in school. He was fighting the urge to lay his head down on the nurses' desk and go to bed. They both were fighting a battle that they were quickly losing. Today, they had a microbiology test and both had stayed up and crammed until the early hours of the morning. Seth took out a few pages of notes from his white coat and forced himself to read. If he wasn't going to be doing anything, he might as well be studying. 

After a few minutes, Seth looked around him. The hospital that his team was stationed at was a small, suburban hospital that catered to the wealthy residents of Lake Forest, Illinois. Today, only four of them got to rotate through the ICU, while the others were split up into groups who got to visit the radiology and surgery departments. He and Aaron were on one side of the ICU, while the other two people in their subgroup where stationed on the other side. Only a few nurses were around, some on the phone, and others visiting patients. A food service worker carted several trays of food that looked better than the food the students were served at med school. Some residents, looking haggard as hell, shuffled in and out of the nurses' station to keep themselves awake for the remainder of their 48 hour shift. Slowly, his eyes began to close again. He began to fade into the world of slumber…

"Hey, man? You need to get a coffee or something?" Seth's eyes snapped open and he was face to face with a janitor who had been cleaning up a room.

"Huh? Sorry, what?"

"Coffee. You're free to it, you look like you and your friend here look like you've had a rough night."

"Umm, yeah. Thanks, but I already had a cup." Seth pointed at the empty Styrofoam cup on the desk.

"Okay, but don't be sleepin' on the job. The doctors sure don't like that," he cackled and went back to stripping the room of all the linens. Aaron sent Seth a look and rolled his eyes. 

***

"Hey, guys, bored out of your mind yet?" the nurse that was in charge, Nancy, sympathetically looked at the medical students. 

"Umm, no. These charts are really interesting."

"Oh, okay, well in a few minutes, something may be happening in room 4 where we may have to remove the person's breathing tube, so I'll let you know when that happens and you guys can come watch. Have you ever seen them remove a tube?" Both boys shook their heads, no. "Well, there is a balloon that they inflate so that the tube can be worked out of the esophagus. You'll see, just hang around here for a few minutes and I'll come get you."

"Thanks, Nancy."

"Yeah, thanks," Aaron grinned at Seth, "well at least we'll get to see something interesting. Do you think they'll let us do something?"

Aaron was one of those kids who had wanted to become a doctor since he was about 4 years old. He was excited about the prospect of doing anything and he was always eager for hands on opportunities.

"Oh, what, watching the coffee filter through the machine wasn't exciting enough for you? I don't think we'll actually get to do anything, since we know how to do anything, but at least we'll get to see."

"Definitely man." 

They waited for a few more minutes until Kate came out of the patient's room. She motioned for them to come over, and they ducked through the curtains and stepped into the room. 

Beep. Beep. Beep. 

The sound of the ventilator reverberated through the small, dark room. A nurse turned on the light to reveal a woman laying in the bed. Cold and pale. Her eyes were closed and it didn't look like she was alert. The machines breathed and hummed next to her, the steady beat of the medical orchestra.

This is not what Seth had been expecting. 

His other classmates who had seen ventilation tubes removed had all described how the patient was stable so they were getting moved upstairs, out of ICU and out of life threatening danger. But no one had ever described a scene like this. He leaned in closer to see the woman's face and was surprised to not find a woman's face, but a young girl's face instead. She must have been around his age, although lines and scars on her face made her look a lot older. She lay there, still. And he found himself holding his breath, waiting for her eyes to flutter open. 

But they didn't.

Aaron looked much more somber than he did a few moments ago when the prospect of something exciting and new was offered to him. Neither of them realize what was going to happen at that point, but now they were painfully aware of the reality of the situation.

"Seth, Aaron, our patient this morning is a 21 year old female. She had a heroin problem, and she overdosed a few days ago. The police brought her here and she's been in a vegetative state since then. We are fairly sure that her brain was without oxygen for about 15-20 minutes before she was found by the paramedics. So basically, she is brain dead."

He was shocked at the ease with which the nurse was able to describe the situation to them. It was her job, and he was sure that she had seen many worse situations, but still this was shocking to him. He looked at the parts of her body that were exposed. The skin on her neck was practically translucent. Her dull blue veins were clearly visible through the thin sheath of epidermis. Her arms were scarred and her fingers were curled. She had stringy brown hair that hung limp around her face. Her nose was small, but her lips were full and pink. They were the only color on her face. She could've been pretty; she probably was pretty once. 

She reminded him of someone. Someone that he once, and probably still did, love dearly. He pushed those thoughts out of his head. He did not want to liken her with a patient who looked so small and deathly in this hospital bed before him.

"Where is her family? Shouldn't they be here? Did they decide to take her off the ventilator?" Aaron's voice sounded weak, and Seth realized that he looked more tired that he had remembered. 

"Well, we did get a hold of her father who was away on business, but he deferred all decisions to the girl's stepmother. Yesterday, the stepmother decided to take her off the respirator. She said she did not want to see her daughter brain dead and hooked up to machines, so she'll be notified after we finish."

Aaron stood at the foot of the bed in silence, pondering what it would be like to be alone, in this situation with no family. He couldn't even imagine. 

"We're just going to have you watch today. I don't really think you boys are ready to actually do it." Both boys nodded.

A nurse stood over the girl and inflated the balloon, while another slowly pulled out the breathing apparatus. Seth felt nauseous as he saw the saliva covered tubes resurface from their storage compartment in her body. They unhooked it from a tube that fed oxygen into her nose. "It's okay, honey, I'm just going to remove the tube from around your ears now."

Seth felt semi-comforted that the nurse was trying to communicate with the girl. She smoothed the girl's hair and removed the plastic tubing from around her ear. The shrill beeping of the respirator pierced the quiet. His eyes were glued to the vitals monitor. It had been beeping at a steady 99 beats per minute, but as soon as the tube was removed, the rate dropped drastically. 78.…73...67...62...

He watched in fantastic horror as the girl's eyes shot open, as she tried to struggle for one last breath. Her chest heaved up and down, in seizure like motions. Harsh gasps for life penetrated the air, as her body jerked violently in the bed. She was so young. She was not ready to leave yet. 

But this was her time.

A trace amount of blood and mucus dripped out of her nose. The other nurse held a suction tube to her mouth to suck up all of the excess fluid that was being forced out of her throat. 

"It's okay, sweetie. The pain will be over soon. It's okay." She dumped all of the waste into a biohazard waste materials box. She then straightened the sheets around the girl.

The vitals dropped. 45...42...36.…30...

A lonely tear escaped from the lacrimal duct of her eye. She was struggling. Fighting.

Trying to win. 

Did she know that she had already lost? Did she know what was happening to her? Or where she was? And why two young medical students were standing in for her family?

And why they were letting her life slip away from her?

They wiped her face off with a damp towel, and then unplugged the machines around her bed. There was no beeping, no hissing, no hum of the respirator.

Silence. 

The monitor was blank, and so was the expression on his face. He was surprised at how quickly death had come to retrieve his latest victim, for lack of a better word. He hoped she wasn't a victim and that she was better off where she was.

They smoothed her hair into place and closed her eyes. He looked at her, so peaceful before the sheet was pulled over her head and the machines were rolled out of the room. The nurses buzzed around them, already talking about another case that would be brought in soon. They stood in silence.

He hoped she was out of her pain now.

Aaron quickly exited the room, muttering a thank you, and Seth followed him to the break room, where he leaned up against the wall and sighed heavily. Neither had seen anything like this before. 

"God." They stood in silence for a few seconds before Seth could collect his thoughts and answer.

"I know." Seth sighed and sat down on a chair.

"I mean, I just have so many unanswered questions. It just seems so weird that a few minutes ago, I was freaking out about my micro test and now a life is gone. I feel sick to my stomach." 

"I know what you mean. Seeing this for the first time puts things into perspective. I mean, the nurses in there. They did their job then they moved on. But we, we're sitting here in the break room, devastated and sad and confused, and I dunno."

"It's so weird to think that by the time we become doctors, we will have seen this dozens of times and that one day we'll be desensitized to it. I can't imagine not feeling something anytime something happens."

"I'm sure they feel something, it's just that they have to be strong and cover it up so that they can function and do their jobs."

"Maybe." 

"Are you ready to go?"

"You think we should? We still have about an hour left of the time."

"I've seen enough today. I think they'll understand." Seth got up slowly and stretched. 

He was wide awake now.

The two emerged from the break room and found Nancy. She, of course, understood the position that the boys were in. She had once seen her first death too. They were probably the first of their class to see a direct death in a room. It was hard, she knew.

They walked to the parking lot in silence. A light sprinkling of rain greeted them as they reached the car.

"I'm going to call my parents as soon as I get back," Aaron sighed.

"Me too." Seth wished that he had more time to talk to his parents. With the stress of med school, the conversations happened about once or twice a week for a few seconds at a time.

"I have to call my brother too."

"Yeah, I will definitely call my sister and see if she's alright." 

"Isn't this weird? We weren't thinking of this yesterday. But now, it's like life is so short. She was younger than us. There are so many things that I want to change and rectify. I don't want to regret anything because you never know when you're going to go."

"I know what you mean. This is so heavy, I mean, shit."

"Hey, can you wait up for a second? There's something that I really have to do before we go."

"Sure."

Seth walked away from the car and turned on his cell phone. He couldn't get the image of the girl lying in the bed, lifeless. His thoughts had begun to mix and then he saw _her_ face in the same position. He had made some mistakes in his life, but this would not be one. He would not regret ever getting this off his chest.

He listened patiently to her chatter away on her message. Beep…beep.

"Hi Summer, it's me. I know you haven't heard from me in awhile, but umm, I saw someone die today. I know that you're probably freaked out at this point, but I need to tell you how I feel because life is too short and I need you to know this, just in case anything happens. I love you. I have always loved you. And I will love you. Call me back when you get this."

He flipped his phone shut and walked to the car feeling nothing. The gray sky lightened a bit, as the rain misted around him. Life was short, so he had to take the chance. He hoped she would take it, too.

He stopped in the middle of the lot and looked around him at all the things he took for granted. He was healthy, he was able-bodied, he had opportunity. He was alive.

So he closed his eyes. 

And he breathed. 

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The End


End file.
